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toblix

Dead Rising

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There's a magazine to give the escortees courage and make them fight.

Also I would suggest generally using waypoints to make them stay in a place, rather than go to a place.

Don't waste the good weapons on them, they last longer and are far more effective if you use them. Give the escortees shitty weapons.

I was caught of guard by the loonies event also, but it always happens when you first enter that area after a certain story event I think. So you can control when it occurs so you can deal with it first.

I have nothing helpful to say about getting groups of people to zone with you, they are all stupid jerks.

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Which prompts another question: With almost nobody even completing a game once (an assumption based on the statistics Valve released on Episode 1)

On the other hand, using the same the statistics we can see that only 39.27% of the players actually finishes a game and that even when it's something like 5h 38m long. So why bother making a full game in the first place ?

More seriously, I think that most games offer replayability as a market selling points : games are still widely considered as goods more than they are considered as cultural objects, so it appeals to the consumer inside us that we get greater value for our money

But in terms of design, good replayability shoudln't be a feature that is decided in a vacuum, it should derive from other choices in the design. The best example is Blood Money in which you tend to do the same mission twice or thrice to see how the game would react to a different kind of approach, while trying to be the perfect assassin the game push you to be.

So in this respect, and if I clearly understood what some friends told me about the game, Dead Rising's replayability comes from the fact that the game ask you to make real choice between who lives and who dies, which in trying to recreate a zombie holocaust setting, is kinda coherent and neat.

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There's a magazine to give the escortees courage and make them fight.
Jesus, I need to get that.
Don't waste the good weapons on them, they last longer and are far more effective if you use them. Give the escortees shitty weapons.
What?! I thought the weapons lasted forever when I gave them to survivors! To me it seems like they do. I usually hand them katanas. Are you sure?
On the other hand, using the same the statistics we can see that only 39.27% of the players actually finishes a game and that even when it's something like 5h 38m long. So why bother making a full game in the first place ?
Yes, of course. But making only half a game would be stupid. I would think the conclusion would be to make shorter, more interesting games. But that's only if you're aiming for that 100% rating. Also:
Our data indicates that while 51.32% of the players have reached the final map (as noted in the Highest Map Played graph below), only roughly half of those players have completed the game. This leads us to believe that either players are quitting before they see the credits, or there is a bug in how we collect this data.
Dead Rising's replayability comes from the fact that the game ask you to make real choice between who lives and who dies, which in trying to recreate a zombie holocaust setting, is kinda coherent and neat.
Yeah, but the feeling I get isn't that I have to make that choice because there are too many of them, or because there's too little time, or because there's some alternate reward for letting them die. I feel like I'm letting them die because the game mechanics that come into play when I try to save them are horrible. I'm not sad about losing survivors when they are killed because they were just standing there, their pathfinding algorithm clearly unable to traverse some trivial obstacle. Also, you're not forced to choose: There's even an achievement for saving everyone. And that is lame.

Anyway, I'm now going to try something I just know I'll regret: Saving five or six people in one go, all the while risking losing the main story.

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What the fuck? "Medicine Run" does not have a timer... how in the fuck was I supposed to know it was too late. Now I have to restart everything. Jeez!

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So, I restarted and now I just get the survivors to follow me for the PP, and then I leave them to die. It's fantastic. Now I can concentrate on the story, and use my spare time to drive around in the maintenance tunnel or take upskirt photos of that big-canned DHS agent for max points.

If I had a say in the development progress, and if I knew Japanese, I'd go "Hasuiken hodokan! Hai, Keiji-san -- matasushi sulovaivolu kurukai hotosan bossoru! Ahaha!" which basically means "Less stupid survivors, more excellent cut-scenes and fun boss fights! Ahaha!"

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First thing I do when I play is find the magazines that give bladed weapons ,tools, and toys 3 times life... and then get the mini-chainsaws off the clown. Virtually ever lasting chainsaws! The only way to travel.

Also, one thing that is useful is one of the cocktails that you can make turns you to "zombie bait". If you are escorting crowds this helps since the zombies focus on you and not the brain-damaged people running around hopelessly behind you.

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Yeah, yeah, there are always convoluted, time-consuming ways to do what you want in these games. I'm sure there's a great weapon that you get if you kill every zombie in the mall without eating, or whatever.

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On the other hand, using the same the statistics we can see that only 39.27% of the players actually finishes a game and that even when it's something like 5h 38m long. So why bother making a full game in the first place ?

Those stats are for HL2EP1 though, not trends. I recently saw a speaker quote this stat without giving attribution, applying it to games as a whole. I asked her later where it was from and she said couldn't remember, and was kind of hoping the audience would answer that for her...

Whether it seems likely that the majority of gamers leave them uncompleted or not, ep1 stats tell us nothing about games in general. I'm not saying it's the case, but there could have been some specific things about ep1 that really irked, bored or confused 60% of people. There could have been another game release that stole the incredibly limited play time of 20-30 somethings with young families. &c., &c.

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I agree with you, hence the 'More seriously' following the paragraph you quoted.

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I thought I'd just reiterate my liking for this game. It's awesome.

I'm playing it again for the second time, this time doing the main story quests and not giving one flying fuck about the survivors. Sure, I'll get them to follow me. For the join bonus. Then I crush their skulls with the sledgehammer. So I found out that this game isn't that hard. The boss fights (up until now, anyway) are pretty easy, so it's just my bag: little resistance, much cut-scenes and bloodletting.

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Erm. Bump.

I've only just got around to this. It's harsh. I ended up running over tens of thousands of zombies just to get myself past level 20 to make the game easier.

Questions:

Is there any way of stopping the convicts from respawning? God damn, killing them is a chore. I've settled on baiting themover to the picnic stand, climbing on the roof (the gunner can't fire high enough to get you then), then emptying an SMG into them.

I guess I can ignore them now I've got the key to the maintenance tunnels, but I take it driving through them means not being able to take survivors?

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Have you met the clown yet? There's a shortcut around the convicts, and to open it you have to meet him first. Have you?

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Ah, no. Thanks for the heads up, I'd read about that shortcut and was wondering if I had to defeat him to open it up or not.

(Might be too late? it's 5 a.m. on the second day in my current play through).

My inventory tends to be baseball bats + sports book (because bats are much faster than the sledgehammer, and getting stuck in the tunnels once next to a bust car was enough to teach me to always have a book and weapon combo), plus a mix of SMG, orange juice and katanas. People have said such good things about the chainsaws that I think I'll bump off the clown to get them though.

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You should always kill the clown, for three reasons:

  1. After killing him, use the control panel again to find a guy who'll show you the shortcut.
  2. After killing him, you'll find his awesome mini-chainsaws, which last forever with the right magazine combo (which I've forgotten)
  3. His death animation is hee-larious!

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  1. After killing him, you'll find his awesome mini-chainsaws, which last forever with the right magazine combo (which I've forgotten)

I believe I gave it on the first page of this thread :P

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Having to start again at the early levels actually turned out quite satisfying. On one play through, I was intending solely to rack up PP in the tunnels for as long as possible then die and restart, but made a quick stop to grab a sledgehammer and beat the shit out of that annoying photographer :tup:

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Screw this :tdown:

It just interrupted a boss fight to tell me all of the cases were now inaccessible, unless I wanted to start again. Again.

It might have given me some shred of information to tell me I needed to be somewhere specific at 6a.m., but the fonts for scoop cues and dialogue are too small to read on a non-HDTV, even when I squint and get close.

The only people I want to take a sledgehammer to right now are the developers.

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For some reason, I just started playing this game. I like it...but I decided to search for a thread to explain some things. For one, I couldn't figure out why Otis (the janitor) kept telling where survivors were hidden. I didn't really get why I was supposed to care about going out of my way to save them...I don't approve of the way the game uses people like flags in Assassin's Creed or something (in other words, they're checkpoints to be collected on the way toward 100%) and then, when I tried to go help some of the barricaded people they wouldn't even talk to me (granted I had to partially wreck their barricade to get to them, but what else could I have done?).

Also: did you guys notice you can spit on people by aiming with nothing in your hands and pressing the throw/fire button?

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Don't hang up on me. It's rude.

I don't think you should worry about rescuing every survivor. Many died for me before I encountered them at all. I knew them only as names on a rapidly shrinking bar graph.

I made it to "Overtime Mode", but stopped playing Dead Rising after that. Zombies are fun to kill, but

the military

is too hard!

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For some reason, I just started playing this game. I like it...but I decided to search for a thread to explain some things. For one, I couldn't figure out why Otis (the janitor) kept telling where survivors were hidden. I didn't really get why I was supposed to care about going out of my way to save them...I don't approve of the way the game uses people like flags in Assassin's Creed or something (in other words, they're checkpoints to be collected on the way toward 100%) and then, when I tried to go help some of the barricaded people they wouldn't even talk to me (granted I had to partially wreck their barricade to get to them, but what else could I have done?).

Also: did you guys notice you can spit on people by aiming with nothing in your hands and pressing the throw/fire button?

Otis radios you because you're kind of the defacto go-to guy to get shit done and he wants to see them rescued. They provide you with stat upgrades when you get them back to the safe room but are rather meaningless to the overall plot. So if you're beefed up enough as is, no need to get them.

I did not notice you could spit on people. I know a a couple special agents who are getting spit on.

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Otis radios you because you're kind of the defacto go-to guy to get shit done

I know, but that comes out of nowhere. I'm a playing as a snarky arrogant guy who suddenly becomes the deputy sheriff and runs around going out of his way to save people. The way the game has you wandering around really dampens the feeling of your life being at stake. Going to rescue someone or not doing so should be a big decision, like leaving the safe-room in Left4Dead2 but instead it's fairly casual. Plus, when go help that special agent in the beginning, I go find him and he says, hey help me kill this guy, I'll lay down cover fire, you go do most of the work, and Frank West just does it almost without question.

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I know, but that comes out of nowhere. I'm a playing as a snarky arrogant guy who suddenly becomes the deputy sheriff and runs around going out of his way to save people. The way the game has you wandering around really dampens the feeling of your life being at stake. Going to rescue someone or not doing so should be a big decision, like leaving the safe-room in Left4Dead2 but instead it's fairly casual. Plus, when go help that special agent in the beginning, I go find him and he says, hey help me kill this guy, I'll lay down cover fire, you go do most of the work, and Frank West just does it almost without question.

I don't know if you're really meant to feel your life is at stake/in serious danger in any immediate sense. The zombies are harmless for the most part, it's the other humans that are dangerous. How would you implement it differently (honest, serious question), so that the stranded people were more of an issue the player has to choose between?

The last part, that's not all that unusual in a lot of games that have AI teammates. Most have stormtrooper aim and can take as much punishment as a small child. I can't explain this other than to artificially make the game harder/fights longer and more focused on the player. If they didn't constrain you, what would you do? You'd be left to wander around and help people. They could have scripted it so Frank wasn't such a pushover, but they took the quickest route to killing things and moving the story along.

I'd love if you were part of a functioning team and everyone did equal damage to enemies, but then I also enjoyed the smug satisfaction of knowing I, Frank West was better at handling this situation than a rent-a-cop and the Feds.

Edited by Gabbo

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How would you implement it differently (honest, serious question), so that the stranded people were more of an issue the player has to choose between?

I don't have time to consider this as much as I'd like to right now, so I'll just say I would have made the zombies much more dangerous, so that traveling toward the location of an NPC rescue was something that could easily get me killed and so that the threat to Frank West would intensify with the distance he covered. Like in the beginning of Fallout 3. The game is so rough on you that by the time you actually get to one of your destinations you've been beaten down to hell and back and actually feel somewhat like you've made a "journey".

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